As indicating the return of the Sheffield workers to designs prior to their own day the Chestnut Dish and Cover illustrated (p. 255) offers conclusive proof. It has all the quietude of the work produced in the Queen Anne period. It depends for its effect on its form and the play of light on its surface. The twisted handles are terminated by lion masks. The foot is plain, but the edge of the rim of the body is quietly godrooned. The lid is surmounted by an oval knob, which the Staffordshire potters seized later as their own. The accompanying illustration shows a Fruit Basket, in date about 1810, and it resembles the work of Paul Storr, the London maker of that period. It is of simple basket form. Its broad rim emulates the technique of the basket maker in appearance and is equally necessary here in order to add to the strength of a design carried out in wire. The base is oval and stands on four claw feet in combination with scroll design as shown in other examples in candelabra and other work of the same period. [Illustration: OLD SHEFFIELD PLATED CENTREPIECE. Hexagonal base on scroll feet. Urn-shaped wire basket, supported by three semi-nude female figures, surmounted by large circular cut-glass bowl. (_In the collection of B. B. Harrison, Esq._)] =The Destruction of Old Dies.=--The Sheffield firms were not wise in their generation. They committed a great blunder which they regretted for long afterwards. We do not say that this led to the extinction of the industry, for there were other very important causes which resulted in silver plating in the old style being superseded. But undoubtedly the destruction of old dies by a number of firms did lead to the constant production of work which might very well have been left undone. When the fashion for the classic designs of the Adam period and that immediately succeeding it was found to have been discarded, these old dies were melted down for the value of the metal. They represented many thousands of pounds outlay to each of the firms who had produced them, and nowadays, when reticence and sobriety of design have again come into their own after the long night of the early and later Victorian meaningless trivialities in design in metal work, these old dies would have won distinction by their re-employment. But they must remain a sad memory to those who know what once has been, and as so often happens in any industry dependent on the caprice of fashion, it is easy to be wise after the event.